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I keep re-doing the same zones for animals I'd already had created for my colonists (like "indoors") - it would be great to be able to assign colonist zones to animals - or simply not have two kinds of zones.

My experience with A13 so far is that the main impediment to expanding my colony is the lack of components. I seem to run out of them sooner or later and have to rely on traders to get more. I think it's a good thing because I can't spam turrets and such anymore and that scarcity makes me feel more like I'm managing a colony and not a construction site.

Two questions: is there a way to manufacture components that I have missed? And how do you guys manage components?

Discussing the effects of social fights on another thread, I had the following idea: what if colonists had more than one reaction to rivalry which would depend on their personality traits and/or situation?

1) Have the mental state affect how they fight

Unless a colonist is very stressed and enraged, they should only fight "until first blood" - killing another colonist should only happen if they are close to snapping.

2) Have personality traits affecting reactions to rivalries

e.g.:

"coward" - avoids rivals (same behavior as fleeing from danger when seeing their rival) - additionally, this kind of person could be unable to ignore other threats and would always flee

"irate/aggressive" - this personality would be prone to fights and wouldn't stop at "first blood" even in their neutral state

"mediator" - this personality would be likely to try and "talk things out" - they would often get themselves in the risk of being beaten but would be more likely to get their rivalries to end quickly.

These are just examples of what can be done to make the mechanic more interesting.

I posted it as a comment on another thread but I think it actually deserves being here as a suggestion as well:

IMO, the whole mood debuff for selling people is too general. Most cultures throughout human history had slavery and didn't see an issue with it. It's in the last 200 years that people started to see it as intrinsically bad.

I think that a person's position on slavery should be tied to their background traits. If someone lived on a highly developed world (and maybe also if they were a slave themselves), they should dislike slavery. But if someone was a medieval lordling or something like that, they should see slavery as something completely normal.

I am wondering what everybody else's experiences are but I have never had so much fun with RimWorld as in the current version.

The new tech tree with the new low-tech appliances (like the fueled generator and manual tailoring station) make the early game much more interesting (and the fueled generator keeps being useful as a backup power source in bunkers even later into the game).

The social mechanic makes me see the colonists more as characters and less as pawns in my game. That one time when a noble and a couple were my starting trio, the noble seduced the woman, and her ex-lover beat her to death for cheating... These kinds of stories hook me like nothing before. I literally can't wait to get back home and play again.

Great job Tynan and ison!

It occurs to me that the new zone system could be used instead of (or in addition to) the radius when determining the allowed resources for a crafting tables. Typical uses: make stoneblocks only from rubble found inside your mountain base. Or: make art only from materials found in a given stockpile.

I haven't played RimWorld in a long time so I don't  remember how much of the current economy model was already present in Alpha 8, but it seems to me that it has changed considerably.

Most raw resources cost a lot less, slaves and weapons are a lot more expensive, etc. Also, the fact that a lot of stuff can be used up now (clothes, weapons) makes economy much more interesting.

I must say I like the new model a lot. In previous Alphas, I would quickly become uber-rich. Currently, I really need to think about my resources, what I can afford and what I cannot afford. Building a spaceship is actually a challenge now.

Any thoughts from more experienced players? Do you still get to the point where you have more money than you can spend?

I love how dangerous fires have become now. The new temperature distribution system (probably along with other smaller changes) makes fires in mountain colonies a real problem now.

I got the short-circuit event, and more or less ignored the resulting fire, thinking that my colonists will deal with it as always. Fire has never been a problem for me in previous Alphas. Now, the temperatures soared to +200C and more around the fire, the colonists were catching fire like crazy, and half of them were cooked to death, and the rest died of burns.

I am loving this!

It gives the mountain colonies something to fight against and adds another real non-military threat. (Two of the things I always welcome).

I just tried to start the Alpha 9 on my MacBook Pro (early 2013, Mac OS X Yosemite).

All I am getting is a black screen.

With Alpha 8, I can finally say that RimWorld has gotten that elusive quality that makes it feel rich and complete. (Personal opinion, obviously.)

Up until now, although I loved the game, it felt somewhat like a glorified tower defense, especially in the late game. Now, with the whole temperature system, with changes to the threat scaling, with the much richer economy (a lot more things the colony can produce and a much more robust pricing system), and with several smaller changes (e.g., geothermal power doesn’t feel like a necessity anymore) I finally feel like I am managing a living colony.

I have played about 100 hours of the previous Alphas, so I have been clearly enjoying myself anyway, but now... Let me simply say I am very happy I have trusted Tynan with my money.

It seems to me that the world generation algorithm doesn’t take the vicinity of the ocean into account. From what I have seen, temperature ranges are more or less the same in the middle of the continent as they are at the coast.

I would like to see some differentiation here. It would be cool to be able to play in a British-like climate (or that of Seattle or Vancouver for those of you on the other side of the Atlantic).

Hi Tynan,

In the "How to bring colonies out into the open" thread, there have been a lot of discussions around possible improvements to the raider AI (e.g., having them steal supplies instead of blind charges, etc.). Ever since, I have been trying to figure out whether something like this is your goal at all or not.

So here goes my question: are you planning on adding some more complex behaviors to raiders? Why/why not?

- I think knowing this will help us to better focus a lot of discussions on the Suggestions forum.

In the last few weeks, I have noticed an increasing number of spammers (spambots?) creating accounts on the forum and ...well... spamming.

Has this always been that way and I never noticed because I didn't spend as much time on the forum? Or is it new?

What can we do to make it more difficult for spammers to spoil our fun?

Maybe the first few posts of a person should go through the moderators before they are published? I don't know. These "I am the new guy" topics all over the forum are starting to annoy me.

As in the topic. I am contemplating buying the new Mac Mini and am wondering whether RimWorld would run into any performance issues with the integrated Iris graphics card.

In the thread about bringing colonies out into the open, one of the topics that struck a chord with me was turrets. I would like to sum up some of the thoughts from that thread and put them under discussion. I think this is an important enough topic to warrant its own thread.

Problems with turrets:
- they are unrealistic: all other defensive options require direct operation (including mortars). Where would a ragtag band of colonists find the measures to create such elaborate AI systems right upon landing?
- they are anticlimactic: they tend to lead to a passive defense style and killbox galore: the easiest way to defend yourself is to set up a bunch of turrets and hide until the enemies are dead or badly weakened
- they don't sit well with the colony sim theme: they make the game more of a tower defense than a colony sim. Maybe not a minus for everyone, but I find this at odds with basically every other element of the game.

The proposed solution:
- make them a researchable item so they aren't available at the start
- the basic turret should have a console coupled with it (similar to the comms console) that would need a colonist to man it - one console would operate maybe 3-5 turrets max.
- an advanced console could be researched and created with use of an AI persona core, at which point turrets would become automated, as they are now.

Let the discussion begin.

In Alpha 6, I hated Phoebe. Found the gameplay dull and uneventful. Alpha 7, with improved trading, textiles, etc., finally gives me enough interesting stuff to do between raids. I am playing on a flat jungle map with a massive textile factory and loving it.

Also, diseases add a non-military threat which I enjoy. I hope with future updates there will be more and more such things.

Also, I like the fact that the raiders now are fewer but stronger.

I think this game is going in a good direction.

I have found a topic on Reddit recently where Tynan said he didn't want to add embrasures to the game because people were walling themselves in too much already. So I thought I'd start a thread where we could discuss how the game would have to change to entice us to play more open play styles.

Some thoughts:
- currently, the crashed ship parts always forces me out. Maybe we need more lingering dangers? Something that appears on the map and stays there until you deal with it.
- I think that mining is currently too fast. It is so easy to mine deep into the mountain that there is no reason to build outside. Not to mention that it is actually cheaper to have a mountain base. The walls are already there and the smooth stone floor requires no materials.

I don't know if testers are allowed to answer this, but how buggy is Alpha 7 yet? Are we approaching release? I know there have been a lot of additions this time around so I wouldn't be surprised if it took another week or two...

I guess I'll sign up for testing the next time around because the suspense is killing me.

Hey everyone,

I think we can all agree that RimWorld is an exception in the indie world and a huge chunk of early access games being released is not very good, or at least lacking in some vital areas (e.g., having few updates, unresponsive devs, or whatever). I have grown to be very apprehensive of buying such games.

So: are there any alpha games you can recommend? Also interesting: are there any you would like to warn us against buying?

To start this off, I can heartily recommend one game: Invisible Inc. by Klei Entertainment. It is on Steam Early Access, and it is a tactical turn-based game about sneaking into and robbing corporations (more or less). The difficulty level is very unforgiving, but I find it adds to the charm.

Hi everyone,

I have only been around since Alpha 6 so I haven't experienced a new release yet.

My question: whenever Tynan is ready with the changes, does the next Alpha get released immediately, or are there any closed tests before that? If so, how long do they take and who are the testers?